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Going away on vacation can spell death to your garden if nobody is around to water your plants.
Keith Barker, owner of The Gardeners Center in Darien, has plenty of flowering options to help fill in the holes left by annuals and perennials that have succombed to the heat.
"We get truckloads of new plants every week," Barker says, as a forklift loaded with flowering lavender threads its way past a wall of multi-colored Rose of Sharon shrubs.
Barker says planting in high temperatures isn't a problem. The trick to success, he says, is to water intensively and mulch the perennials. "It's really important to weed around your perennials, too," he says. Weeds compete with your plants for water as well as removing nutrients from the soil.
Barker's garden center is fully stocked with plants that are in full bloom. "People like to buy perennials that are flowering," he says. Flowers at their peak in July include echinacea, salvia, rudbeckia, daisies, yarrow and bee balm. "Blue flowering plants, like salvia and lavender, have been very popular this year," says Barker.
"Container gardening" with annual flowering plants is the thing these days, according to Barker. "People plant perennials in flower beds and annuals in pots," he says. "Customers like to change the flowers in the pots depending on the season." At this time of year flats are sold out but there are plenty of four and six-inch pots of annuals to choose from.
The Gardener's Center stocks an assortment of self-watering pots, which help flowers survive while you're off at the beach. Barker says he prefers using soil additives, such as Soil Moist, which is made of silica crystals. When mixed with potting soil and watered, the crystals expand and help the soil retain moisture. He's also a big fan of self-watering probes, terracotta spouts that stick in the soil and support an upended plastic bottle filled with water. "The water seeps into the soil as the plants need it," he says.
How do you keep your garden alive when you're on vacation?
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